In the 1970's San Francisco of ''Armistead Maupin's 'More Tales of the City,' '' the characters may be homosexual, heterosexual or transsexual, but they are all hopeless romantics. In the brash new comedy series ''Sex and the City,'' the heroine cultivates an anti-romantic pose that suits Manhattan in the 90's, with its post-politically correct attitudes.

EVERY now and then a television series so perfectly captures the mood of a culture that it becomes more than a just a hit: it becomes a sociological event -- something to be studied in terms of historic patterns, analyzed in the spirit of the decade, maybe even incorporated into a college lecture or two.

Sometimes the four women in ''Sex and the City'' rushed through it. Sometimes, in those all-gal powwows over those endless brunches, they whined about it. Sometimes they reported that it was delightful. Sometimes they said it was, well, a letdown. The city, not the sex.

''WELCOME to the age of un-innocence,'' declared Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) at the start of the very first episode of ''Sex and the City,'' six years ago. ''No one has breakfast at Tiffany's, and no one has affairs to remember.''

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July 5, 2015, Sunday

The author of “Sex and the City” and, most recently, “Killing Monica” went through an early Nietzsche and Camus phase: “For some reason, nihilism felt like the right sort of mentality for an 18- to 21-year-old.”